THE CAMPUS
March, 31 2021 – Volume 114 Issue 9
Experienced Presidents Lead On
OCU names Dr. Kenneth Evans as New President Paul Dower
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
OCU announced on Mar. 23 that Dr. Kenneth Evans will serve as the new president of OCU following July 1. In an email from OCU Communications sent out to the campus community, Paul McLaughlin, Board of Trustees chairman, announced that Evans is the chosen pick for president. “With his years of academic leadership at Lamar and other institutions, we are confident in Dr. Evans’ ability to help us continue our tradition of excellence,” McLaughlin said in the email. “His experience as a president and administrator, along with his local connections in central Oklahoma, will be valuable assets in continuing to move the university forward.” President Martha Burger will continue as president of OCU until June 1. Burger said she is looking forward to Evans’s leadership. “I am excited to welcome Dr. Evans as the new president of OCU,” Burger said. “I believe that my alma mater will be in good hands and that OCU’s future is as bright as ever.” Evans currently serves as the president of Lamar University and has served in that position since 2013. Evans has a bachelors in English/political science from University of California-Davis and received his masters in business from California State University-Sacramento and doctorate in business from University of Colorado. Evans has worked in higher education for over 35 years, including serving as dean at the Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma, various positions at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a faculty position at Arizona State University. During the general and student candidate forums hosted by the Presidential Search Committee on March 11, Evans said one of the reasons he wants to be president at OCU is because he likes Oklahoma. “I was in Oklahoma, as you know, for about seven years. I fell in love with Oklahoma,” Evans said. “I grew to love the people here a great deal.” Evans also said he liked OCU is because it is the only university embedded in OKC and is perfectly situated to help the city grow. “Being the only embedded university in this city, you have an obligation to this city,” Evans said. “The more you improve this city with the next level of improvements, revitalizations going on in Oklahoma City, unless you attend the gentrification, you will create a massive problem. There’s too much data out there to demonstrate that that is the case.” Evans said he sees a gentrification problem in Oklahoma City, and he sees the less financially capable people in these gentrified areas will be crowded out of their homes in the coming years. He said he wants OCU to be part of helping these communities when and if this process happens. “You can, indeed, make a contribution as a university to start talking about the important subjects around gentrification, and how we can do intelligent things now in Oklahoma City so we can avoid some of the pitfalls that community after community has experienced,” Evans said. Evans said he thinks issues of diversity and inclusion in most instances comes from a place of ignorance, and universities like OCU should work to educate people on these matters. “Our role, and the great thing about being educators, is we have the opportunity to sit in the driver’s seat to do a much better job of preparing the world to understand how the greatest communities that constitute the network, the fabric, this rich mosaic, this part of humanity, how it all fits together,” Evans said. “And if we’re not playing a role in that space then shame on us.” Student Publications conducted a survey about how the campus community felt about Evans being selected as the new university president and the Presidential Search Process in general. Several community members expressed their concerns about Evans’s ability to lead a healthy and diverse campus. Evans said Lamar University has a very diverse population, with a about quarter of the population on campus being Black, around 21% being Latinx and 58% of students being first generation. Lamar University also has a significant amount of deaf and hearing-impaired students on their campus. Dr. Evans continued on 3
M MEDIAOCU.com
Sou�ce: okcu.edu
Submitted
Dr. Kenneth Evans currently serves as the president of Lamar
Re-elected SGA President Reid Powell and SGA Vice President Brittany
University and is set to take over as president of OCU on July 1.
Wyatt pose in front of the Clara E. Jones Administration Building.
Re-elected SGA President, Vice President devoted to communication, transparency, advocacy Paul Dower
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Reid Powell, Student Government Association president, and Brittany Wyatt, SGA vice president, were re-elected after running unopposed in the recent electoral race. Candidate filing applications for SGA president, vice president and each of the seats in the SGA senate opened March 9. Powell and Wyatt filed their names on the same ticket. The filing closed March 15, and during the mandatory candidate seminar on March 16, it was determined Powell and Wyatt would be elected by acclamation to the roles of president and vice president in accordance with Article III Section Two of the SGA Constitution. Powell and Wyatt will be sworn into their positions on April 13th. The only positions up for an election at press time are the senate seats for the Music District and the Science and Mathematics District. A candidate forum will take place at 5 p.m. on March 26 over Zoom, and the election for these seats will be conducted from 8 p.m. on March 30 to 5 p.m. March 31. The results will be posted that night. The rest of the senate seats were elected by acclamation. Powell is a political science junior and started in SGA at the end of his freshman year when he was elected by acclamation into the senate seat for the Social Sciences District. During that time, he introduced a resolution for Housing and Residence Life to change their housing process to be more gender inclusive and allow students to room with people with whom they shared their gender identity, regardless of what gender they were assigned at birth, which has gone into effect for fall 2021 housing applications. Powell then ran for vice president under Abby Banks, political/philosophy/economics junior, at the end of his sophomore year, and they both won by acclamation. During his time as vice president, he proposed the idea to create gender-inclusive restrooms across campus, a proposal which, according to Powell, will be completed in the coming weeks. Wyatt, a political science/philosophy/ economics sophomore, started her career in SGA as one of the freshman-at-large senators her freshman year. She then ran
for and was elected as one of the sophomore-at-large senators. At the beginning of the fall 2020 semester, she ran for speaker of the senate and was elected to the position. On Nov. 5, 2020, Banks resigned from the SGA presidential position, so Powell and Wyatt took over the positions of president and vice president on Nov. 9. They have served in both positions since then. As president and vice president, they have worked to strengthen SGA’s social media presence, continued to work on initiatives started in the Banks administration and revitalized student caucuses. Powell said his and Wyatt’s platform centers around active communication with the student body, such as increasing social media usage and updating the SGA page on OCU’s website, transparency with students about what is going on in SGA, and advocating for students’ best interests. “In almost every issue we have seen or that has arisen, it is one of these three things that we feel plays a role in how to be more proactive in the future in preventing those from happening. And so, we plan on implementing these, not only in our own administration, but also encouraging—well at this point it will be a future president of our university and our administration to uphold these things as well,” Powell said. Powell said he wanted to continue and expand some of the initiatives the previous administrations have been working on to improve, such as the initiative to create gender-inclusive restrooms across campus and the PATs initiative, which distributes menstrual care products to bathrooms across campus. Powell said he is in the early planning stages to renovate the Student Leadership Center next to Chick-Fil-A in Tom and Brenda McDaniel University Center. “Every day, I walk in, and I see this large piece of real estate on campus that I think has so much potential, and I hardly ever see students using it. So, I think there are ways we can really improve that space and make it a space where student organizations have a place to call their own,” Powell said. According to Powell, the plans to improve the Student Leadership center have not been fully fleshed out, but Powell said he is thinking about adding
lights to brighten up the space, painting the walls, replacing the furniture with new furniture that encourages group collaboration and upgrading the technology. Wyatt said her goals for the next academic year are the same as Powell’s, as well as improving student involvement in SGA and teaching senators how to write legislation and experience that process. “The biggest thing I want to focus on is just legislation: teaching senators how to write legislation, getting the legislation written and the process of doing that. The process of doing that includes reaching out to people in their districts, talking to their peers and students and campus facilities and administration and things like that,” Wyatt said. Powell and Wyatt have chosen two people for the positions in their executive cabinet so far. Torey Smith, political science junior, was chosen for chief of staff, and Tara Ramakrishnan, finance junior, was chosen for secretary of finance. Powell said he will open the rest of the executive cabinet positions, which include secretary of public relations, secretary of policies and initiatives and secretary of diversity, equity and inclusion, to the campus instead of picking people from his inner circle, which he said is common for most SGA presidents to do. “It is typically not precedent that it is through an application,” Powell said. “I know that sometimes there are people who are so eager and passionate to serve in these positions, and they are usually appointed before those people have the opportunity to express that interest. So, I want to make sure that I know everyone that is interested in the role.” The deadline for the applications was 5 p.m. March 24. From there, Powell and the executive committee will decide who they will pick to fill each position. Powell said he is hoping to have his picks selected by April 5. The cabinet picks will then be approved by the student senate during their next meeting. To read the full story, visit MediaOCU. com.
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